


The Waning Moon

by ihopeimbeingcrystalqueer (orphan_account)



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/F, F/M, Genderfluid Character, Implied/Referenced Sexual Harassment, M/M, Next Generation, Teen Pregnancy, corrupt government, the wizarding world legal system
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-10-17
Updated: 2014-10-17
Packaged: 2018-02-19 07:34:18
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,087
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2380100
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/ihopeimbeingcrystalqueer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harry Potter has never trusted authority, and the Ministry has gained his suspicious eye.<br/>With Hermione (Head of the DMLE), Ron (Harry's 2nd in command), Ginny (once on the Holyhead Harpies, now a Prophet columnist), Neville (the Herbology professor), Luna (a freelancer), and Draco and Astoria (who've just realized how terrible it's become), they reform the Ministry and Hogwarts for a hope of a better society.<br/>But...<br/>Meanwhile, evil lurks inside Hogwarts. Children are being plucked from their beds by 'The Dark One', who leaves notes with each stolen child. But when Matthew Smith, Hope Jacks, Christie Beloux, Aria Chang, and Alice Abbott are taken- all friends of the Weasleys- and a note signed with a lipstick kiss is found, it becomes personal, and the clan begins to investigate- and find that there is more hidden here than expected.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Waning Moon

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! I'm shippinginacorner, nice to meet you all. This is my first multi-chapter story on ao3, so I'm not too good at this, I guess.  
> I realize that I have some pretty odd pairings up there- like Molly Weasley II and Hugo Weasley, or Lily and Roxanne. Molly/Hugo will not be very prominent, and Lily/Roxanne will be more of a slow burn and is mostly just preslash this fic. After all, they're thirteen.  
> These characters do not belong to me, just saying. They're all JK Rowling's. Heck, if she wanted them, I'd sell her my OCs. Also, The Secret and Virginia Scottise don't exist.

The Ministry was corrupt.

The revelation had come at work. Harry had been sitting down at his desk, filling in a report after catching and convicting Aphrodite Metis- nicknamed Aph- a skilled witch who'd been using her power to rob houses and win streetfights for the past year. She got five years in Azkaban.

Normally Harry would not have a problem with this. Putting away criminals is the best part of his job, and he loves the fact that he is making sure that no one is ever hurt again. Aph will not rob another Muggle house nor win another streetfight, he knows this. 

But he can still see her face. She was eighteen, a skinny kid with thick dark hair and glasses she was constantly cleaning. Her black leggings had been at least two inches short, and torn. Her dark little elbows were sharp and skinny, and the file said that Aph won those fights by being quick and nimble- and using those sharp elbows. 

The file also said her father had died in a fire- a half-blooded man who had won a lot of money in the lottery named Ed Metis, who had married his colleague that summer. She'd been born a month after the fire, while Ava Crabbe, Vincent's sister, wailed and sobbed about her husband's death. 

Aph was a Slytherin, and she'd been shunned for it. She had four stepsisters and one stepbrother- all from different fathers. Ava Crabbe squandered her fortune on cigarettes and expensive wine and men. 

The criminal collected her Galleons and her euros and sent them home to her sisters. 

Ava had screamed at her daughter on the stand, disowned her for trying to save them. And the peanut gallery had snickered and pointed fingers at the silently crying Aph. They had glared at her as the dementors dragged her away.

Harry buried his head in his hands for a few moments. Then he raised his head and picked up the Portable floo.

"Put me through to the Weasley-Granger household. Connect also to the Weasley-Potter, Longbottom, and Lovegood households."

The faces of his friends appeared in the flames, and Harry took a deep breath. 

"Hello, mates," he began. "I've got something on my mind, and I want your opinion on it."

Hermione smiled. "Sure, Harry. What is it?"

"Well, all right then. So you know the Metis case?"

Ron nodded. "Heard about it, yeah, but I was a little busy. I haven't been keeping up with the gossip much. I'm still on the Mulin chase. Are you too busy to check on her trial? Do you want me to follow up on that?"

"No, no- too late for that, anyhow. Her trial was this afternoon, and I'm pretty angry about it. It was just... wrong. It was all off."

"What do you mean?" Neville asked. "Was she putting on some illusion, or something?"

Harry laughed a little. "I wish. No, it's just that this morning she came into my office and I was caught off-guard. I mean, I saw her pictures and her file, but she looked older in that, yeah? She looked around twenty. But she walks into my office, and I mean, damn, she's eighteen and she looks like a fourth-year. She's bloody  _tiny_!" 

"How tiny?" Luna asked, eyes narrowing. 

Harry shrugged. "I wasn't using a measuring stick or anything... a meter and a half? But it wasn't that, not really. She was just so bloody skinny. I could see her shoulder blades and ribs through her shirt, and she looked like she was made of sticks."

"Damn," Hermione whispered, eyes wide. Neville and Ginny nodded in agreement. 

Ron bit his lip. "Not to doubt you or anything, mate, but... normally I wouldn't believe she's that thin. _Why_ would she be so tiny? I mean, she's supposed to be a really good witch and streetfighter and she burgled a bunch, why couldn't she feed herself?"

Harry nodded. "That's what I thought, actually, but anyways. She started talking about her father. Apparently she never met him. Apparently he died in a very... suspicious fashion. The Auror in charge at the time- Anne Hanson- acknowledged that it was arson, but they never found out who. The kid was born a little while after, but the day after the case was declared cold, her mother remarried."

Ron raised his eyebrows. "Is she still alive now, this woman?"

Harry nodded. "Yes. She divorced seven times. Aph has stepsisters- Athena, Bellona, Diana, and Hestia. And she told me that her mother spends her money for drugs, firewhiskey, etc. When it ran out after her graduation, Aph tried to help. But she couldn't find a job that paid more than a Galleon an hour and would accept her, apparently."

At this, Ginny scoffed. "Her story makes sense up to here," she said. "But there are always at least two shops in the Alleys that pay better than that and are in need of workers. Why would she lie like that?"

Harry nodded grimly. "I checked, actually. She did send in resumés to plenty of places. But she got rejected every time, and I have strong suspicions that it's because she's a Slytherin- or, well used to be."

Ginny's face turned dark with anger. Luna didn't look too pleased either. 

"So poor Aph turns to Muggle robbing and sends the money home to her sisters- which answers why she's so skinny, Ron. She didn't spend much of it on herself. She gets caught, and off she's carted to Azkaban for five years."

" _Azkaban_?" Ron shouted. "But that's enchanted with the  _Dadementio_ charm! It's like bloody dementors are all over the place. I mean, no one gets Kissed, but damn, it's bloody depressing there. Half the inmates commit suicide! Couldn't they have put her somewhere else?"

Neville laughed grimly. "No. There's nowhere else to put her. Haven't you learned that in your time as an Auror?"

Ron looked perplexed. "Sorry, no. I just catch people and send them to Hermione, I don't follow up and check on the trials like Harry does. And Mum never really liked to talk about Azkaban... no one does really."

Ginny furrowed her brow. "And what she did say was pretty basic, anyways. Mum always said that Azkaban was for the worst people, and I think that was it. Shouldn't they have somewhere for people who aren't in for serious crimes? Like people who steal apples."

Hermione answered her. "They definitely should, Ginny. But they don't. In the mind of the Wizarding community, so long as someone is guilty, it doesn't matter if all you did is steal an apple. Off you go to Azkaban, and they differentiate by the length of the sentence. So if you did steal an apple and were convicted, you'd spend maybe three days there. Like a warning."

"That's inhumane!" Ginny shouted. 

Luna nodded. "I agree. Whoever designed this law should be fed to the Driacquelles!"

"Yeah, it is." Harry nodded. "Which is why we need to change it." 

~

Athena Metis sat up with a shout. 

The darkness of the Ravenclaw dormitory was startling- the dorms were usually well-lit, even by night. The starlit ceiling was not illuminated as it always was, and Athena sucked in a breath. 

The ceiling _never_ went out. Even during the fabled Battle of Hogwarts, or more recently during the Great Prank War, when nothing had been sacred, the ceiling had showed the stars. It was spelled to never, ever go out. 

Athena couldn't see anything at all. 

So if she could not see the stars, then logically she could not be in the Ravenclaw dormitory. She had to be in a different part of the castle, then- maybe up in Trelawney's Tower on her couch, since she could feel a soft mattress underneath her. 

She groped, finding the cool metal of a ballpoint pen underneath her fingers, wetting the pillow with ink- _shit, that would stain her nightgown-_ and the sleek cover of her newest book near the edge of the bed- _The Secret,_ by Virginia Scottise. So she was in the dormitory- she hadn't sleepwalked somewhere, then.

She would have normally been unsurprised- Athena had never done that before, unlike her younger sister Bellona. Her sleepwalking exploits were legends over in Gryffindor. 

But if she was not sleepwalking, and if she was actually in her bed, then why were the stars out? 

A shiver crawled up her spine and Athena shook it away. The curtains most likely had been let down by the house-elves while she slept. Unless...

Athena knelt on the bed and brushed her fingers against where the curtains should've been. There they were, covering the bed. So she was in the Ravenclaw dormitory, and the curtains were let down. No problem with that, then. 

Conclusion: She was still in the Ravenclaw dormitory, the curtains had only been let down, that was all. 

Athena pulled back the curtains and sighed in relief as the stars came into view. She swung herself out of bed, grabbed her wand and the book, and whispered, " _Lumos._ " The wand tip lit up brightly, guiding her feet to a pair of worn slippers. 

She went downstairs wearily and sank into one of the armchairs, ringing for a house-elf. After a few minutes, a small creature wrapped in a sheet scurried in with cocoa. Athena accepted it with a wave of her hand, and the elf ran off. 

As she sipped the drink, she Transfigured a broken quill into a lit candle, and laid her wand aside as she opened  _The Secret_ and began reading. 

Then she heard the brittle snap! of wood breaking.

Athena automatically went for her wand, but it was gone. Suddenly the common room was flooded with light, bright as the moon, and for a moment Athena saw the face of a girl, her blood red lips curved into a victorious smirk, dark hair shining with the light as the globes of it brightened in her soft hands.

Just as suddenly, the light went out, her candle and all of the stars but one as well. Athena screamed, hands scrabbling for her wand, something heavy, a lamp-  _anything-_

At last she found the wand under her fingertips and nearly sobbed with relief as she grabbed it and brought it to her chest, and then she noticed something. She squinted in the dim light of the lone star-

and this time she really did sob as she found her wand snapped, the phoenix feather all that held together the bits of rosewood, and as she stared down at it, the red feather slowly crumbled into nothingness.

Someone chuckled, and Athena let out a little whimper. "Please, what's going on?" She cried out. "Who are you?!"

It spoke. "There is no who. I am the Dark One. I am Darker than the First and the Lord, I am the blackness and the void and the end. I am the One, and you are a child barely worthy of witnessing my glory, which is why I have only allowed you a second of light to see me."

Her voice- because it was unquestionably a her- was gravelly and low and monotonous. The shivers crawled up Athena's side, and a cold hand touched her face. 

"We are alone now. We are the abyss together. You stood on the edge of it, and you saw me. You saw my face, and now you have fallen into the abyss. It was said, be careful that you gaze into the abyss, for the abyss also gazes into you. And I looked into you and I saw a worthiness."

Athena felt faint. "You're insane," she whispered as she felt something sharp- a syringe, she thought- enter her neck. 

"I am indeed the insanity," the voice said dreamily. "Indeed I, the insanity, am."

And then consciousness left Athena.

~

They found the note stabbed into the armchair. The windows were smashed, candle wax smeared over the ceiling, and the carpet burnt, shards of the mug, which had been smeared with blood. 

_dear students_

_Those living at Hogwarts has been very naughty lately, and let's just say if you shrimps get to be bad children, I think I might as well join you and take a few of you along for the ride, like Athena Metis._

_Don't worry- I'm not one for guilty sluts, so all of those can sleep soundly._

_I much prefer innocent prudes anyways._

_Love, the Dark One. Kisses!_

Athena Metis was nowhere to be found. 

**Author's Note:**

> Teddy: 19  
> Victoire: 17  
> Dominique, Molly, Athena, & Lucy: 16  
> James, Fred, Aria, Matthew, Bellona, Jonas, & Louis: 15  
> Albus, Hope, Diana, Alice, Scorpius, Rose, Lysander, & Lorcan: 14  
> Christie, Hugo*, Ryder, Hestia, William, Leslie, Lily*, Roxanne: 13  
> My OCs:  
> William Macmillan  
> Christie Beloux  
> Hope Jacks  
> Matthew Smith  
> Aria Chang  
> Alice Abbott  
> Ryder Quill  
> Leslie Westen  
> Athena, Diana, Aph, Hestia, and Bellona Metis  
> Jonas Black  
> *I made Lily and Hugo a year older than they usually are, just to warn you.


End file.
